I don't just mean combat vs. social (vs. skill-based; so many people forget that!), or high amounts of dice-rolling vs. low, or how long the NPC list is, or descriptive vs. sparse, or how lethal a game is, or any of the single factors that tend to come up when people are asking about stylistic matters, or even what medium you tend to run/play in--I mean all of them at once. None of these things operate in a vacuum, after all.

So how do you play? How do you run? Have you noticed differences?

I'll start: I'm social and skill use dominant. I prefer small numbers of dice rolls, but when my players are rolling, it's just as often knowledge-related skills or trying to read a social situation as anything. Lots of fluff-details, lots of careful description, lots and lots of NPCs (I've only run one game, but let's just say the NPC list is big enough that even I'm starting to need a wiki to keep track of it). Run purely online by choice, will play face to face but tend not to be as good at it (and do skill-based more when face to face, but am absolutely devastating with social characters online). Low lethality; while a lot of people are fond of the risk element in combat, I play with permanent death and am more concerned with watching my players think than watching them bleed--and besides, it's so much more fun to mess with their heads to a certain extent anyway.

With three young children who I like spending time with, I find myself pretty much relegated to play-by-post games simply because I can't commit specific blocks of time to play "live". So, my style is pretty much dictated by the realities of PbP -- a lot more dialog and character interaction, lots of skill use, more RP and puzzle-solving, and less hack-and-slash. Not that I don't like a little hack-and-slash from time to time, but it is generally more difficult to deal with when all of the players are posting out-of-order and with different frequency.

I have two distinct styles with which I run games that are dependent on whether or not I'm playing online or in-person.

On-line, I tend to run a lot of diverse NPCs with at least some depth and history behind them. I try to make my plots intricate and interesting, but I also like to design dungeons with a lot of encounters and traps. I'll proooobably start reducing the number of encounters for future, since combat on PBP takes so long, but yeah. I try to be detailed and diverse online. Outside of dungeons, I encourage PCs to split up to get more of the world I've developed in.

When I get into real-life play, I tend to be a bit more focused on one or two NPCs, primarily because I have an inflexible voice, and don't have a lot of time to flesh out a lot of different people. I've got fewer areas really well developed and more on-the-fly, vague areas for wherever the PCs go during downtime. I tend to run more kick-in-the-door games in person as well, but that's mainly because it seems to be what the players want.

When I play, I can go just about anywhere as far as character class and race goes. I've got a gnome wizard, a dwarven cleric, and an orc druid in active play right now. I'm making a halfling scout/ranger for a game soon, and as soon as I can find a game I'm interested in that doesn't have some sort of hate for the Tome of Battle I've got a few warblade/crusader concepts I want to test out, so I tend to be all over the place. I tend to avoid humans simply because that's what everyone expects, and I don't play elves because I friggin' hate elves. I like dwarves, I like halflings, and I like goliaths in games that allow LA buyoffs. I tend to play male characters simply because that's more comfortable for me, but there are one or two concepts I've had that strangely seem to work out to a female character. One thing I insist upon is that whatever I play is strong in whatever role it must fill. If the DM is using rolling, and I end with a really poor roll, if I'm not given a re-roll I will withdraw from the game, even if it's a really interesting concept. I've played the weak character before, and it's not fun for anyone around. ("Wizard, dispel the curse!" "I can't, I didn't roll well enough at statgen!" <Everyone dies.>)

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